INTRODUCTION.

SAXO’S POSITION.

Saxo Grammaticus, or “The Lettered”, one
of the notable historians of the Middle Ages, may
fairly be called not only the earliest chronicler
of Denmark, but her earliest writer. In the latter
half of the twelfth century, when Iceland was in the
flush of literary production, Denmark lingered behind.
No literature in her vernacular, save a few Runic
inscriptions, has survived. Monkish annals, devotional
works, and lives were written in Latin; but the chronicle
of Roskild, the necrology of Lund, the register of
gifts to the cloister of Sora, are not literature.
Neither are the half-mythological genealogies of kings;
and besides, the mass of these, though doubtless based
on older verses that are lost, are not proved to be,
as they stand, prior to Saxo. One man only, Saxo’s
elder contemporary, Sueno Aggonis, or Sweyn (Svend)
Aageson, who wrote about 1185, shares or anticipates
the credit of attempting a connected record.
His brief draft of annals is written in rough mediocre
Latin. It names but a few of the kings recorded
by Saxo, and tells little that Saxo does not.
Yet there is a certain link between the two writers.
Sweyn speaks of Saxo with respect; he not obscurely
leaves him the task of filling up his omissions.
Both writers, servants of the brilliant Bishop Absalon,
and probably set by him upon their task, proceed, like
Geoffrey of Monmouth, by gathering and editing mythical
matter. This they more or less embroider, and
arrive in due course insensibly at actual history.
Both, again, thread their stories upon a genealogy
of kings in part legendary. Both write at the
spur of patriotism, both to let Denmark linger in
the race for light and learning, and desirous to save
her glories, as other nations have saved theirs, by
a record. But while Sweyn only made a skeleton
chronicle, Saxo leaves a memorial in which historian